Picking Locks
by Cherry Champagne
Summary: Use to be "Anything". Craig waited too long, Tweek didn't wait long enough, and Dave, whoever the hell he is, needs to meet guys his own age.
1. Tweek

A/N: Number one, please, please, listen to Metro Station while you read this

A/N: Number one, please, please, listen to Metro Station while you read this. Specifically Now That We're Done. Two, Craig's sissy is named in tribute. I'm using the Nommel surname.

--

It all came down to how he got there.

Walking was safe. Walking was good. Yes. Walking meant so many good things; I was sure if I saw him walking I might fall to my knees (well, I was already on my knees, but whatever,) and thank the God I'd never believed in. Driving was bad. Driving was the worst thing that could happen. Not driving—Tweek was far too afraid to drive. And I had listened to every stupid reason why. Riding a car. In the passenger's seat. Of a car that didn't belong to his parents—it would be stupid to take a special car trip for a distance so short, and besides, Tweek's parents were down at that fucking coffee shop all day. Whoever the hell he was, HIS car.

"What are you doing?" Alex asked over my shoulder. I turned, gave her the finger, and saw a flash of one in return before turning back to the window.

"I'm waiting for Tweek."

"You're such a faggot for him. Why are you waiting like that?"

"None of your god damned business."

Fingers were again exchanged, although I didn't turn to see hers.

She did catch my attention, however, by approaching me from behind and falling to her knees in a meaningless mimic of my own posture, staring out the low-built front window and gripping the sill in a similar manner. Her hands were so tiny for someone with so much anger inside them. Just like my own eleven-year-old self.

"What are you doing?" I asked now.

"It's not your fucking window."

"Alex, seriously, this is none of your—" That shitty tan van slowed to a stop at my curb. The windows were tinted darker than could possibly be legal, so that I couldn't see what went on inside—but the vehicle idled for almost thirty seconds before I heard the muffled slam of the door through the cheap window and saw Tweek round the nose of it, waving with fingers that twitched in toward the palm like a dead spider's legs. He stood on the sidewalk until the ugly van sped off, his head movements telling me he was admitting the occasional grunt. Only once it turned the corner and was out of sight, he walked up the driveway to the door.

"I didn't notice anything funny. Did something good or bad happen?" Alex asked, pushing back from the window to sit with her legs bent beneath her.

"Go to your room, Alex." We never really had that sort of relationship, but like anyone angry, I had an overblown sense of authority. The I'm-so-pissed-I'll-beat-up-anyone-who-displeases-me kind of authority.

"Who do you think you are?"

The doorbell rang.

"Go to your _room_, Alex!"

"Geez, clean some of that sand out of your vagina." With a deep sort of sarcasm, she stood and walked out of the living room.

The doorbell rang again. Tweek was always a bit over-enthusiastic with knocks and rings and calls and the like. He once called nine times in four minutes (leaving a message with each call) because he had seen some dumb documentary that obviously just used exaggerated claims about terrorism to freak people into watching.

I opened the door for him. He stood, smiling like nothing was new, short and middle-aged and infantile and grey and like he was eternally about to hurl. "Hey." He squeaked.

I didn't acknowledge his greeting, but walked out of the doorway, leaving him to remove his shoes and close the door for himself. I flopped down on the shitty couch, found the remote between the cushions, and turned the weather channel on mute. We never really turned the TV all the way off in my house.

Tweek, the most alarmable person in the universe, had yet to be alarmed. He pulled off his zip-up hoodie (it was new; a white and checkered one I hadn't helped him pick out and certainly not the style his mom usually picked for him,) and carefully hung it up on a spare hanger in the closet. The only other coats in there were things that seemed to have grown onto the hangars like mold—each member of my family had one coat, and they usually ended up on beds, chairs, and floors.

"Tweek."

"Yes?" The first consonant hit a note that I was surprised my ears could even hear, before cracking into something more normal by Tweek standards.

"Um…" Shit. How do you even say this kind of thing? "Who dropped you off?"

There. Tweek started to look like Dr. Katz with a pronounced neck and eye twitch. "Auu—Ah—why?" He stood on the other side of the coffee table, not realizing how scared he looked standing while I sat below him with my torn socks propped up on the low table.

"That…wasn't your mom or dad's car…"

I should've chosen different wording. The words "mom and dad" obviously inspired his rushed lie. "That—that was my uncle! He's in town. This week. Urrghh." He grinned something that was half Cheshire Cat half mental patient, his strained eyes making the whole charade horribly pathetic.

"Don't lie, Tweek."

"I'M NOT!" He shrieked this bit. I knew Alex would hear upstairs—or probably just outside the doorway. Whatever.

"You're LYING again!"

"URRRGHAUU…!" His head fell fast, eye sockets pressed into the heels of his palms as he swayed, his legs suddenly looking like sticks perfectly balanced to support a brick that were beginning to fall. He sat down cross-legged on the ground, unable to stand with his body rippling so fast.

"Tweek?" I stood now, not panicked but concerned, and knelt beside him. The only thing I could think to do (short of giving him coffee, but that would take far too long,) was wrap one arm around his shoulders and press his head into the crook of my shoulder, rocking him slightly like a god damned baby as he waiting for the attack to pass. They behaved almost like orgasms. I shushed him, sure to roll my eyes to save at least an iota of my manhood. I hated this. I would do it, and I would continue to do it, but I hated being a fucking mother calming a fucking four year old. Nommels don't comfort people. Nommels wait until you're low enough and then kick dirt in your eyes.

He was now only panting and staring wide-eyed at the ground. I took the opportunity to leave him long enough to get a mug of the coffee I had brewed, just like I always brew when I'm expecting him. I hate the stuff.

He accepted it and drained half the slightly oversized mug in one breath, Panting now from drinking rather than panic, he managed to turn those huge, exhausted lime pulp eyes up to me and ask, "What d-do you know?"

"I think I know a lot."

--

_It was weird for Tweek not to answer his door, even if he didn't expect me. Usually in a weirdly short amount of time after I knocked I would see the curtains of his front window draw back a fraction of an inch, the inside room too dark to show anything beyond that, and then hear the click of three locks. I had knocked three times now, and was growing impatient of standing on the step. As it was during the day, I knew his parents wouldn't be home, and I didn't care much what Tweek thought of my manners, so I tested the knob myself and found it, surprisingly, unlocked. _

_Something was weird inside. Weird enough that it felt inappropriate to take off my shoes. Something funneled between the floors and somewhat foreign sounding—music—was playing, and on a very tangible layer beneath that, silence. I knew Tweek's music, and this wasn't it._

_I ascended the stairs. The music grew louder as I grew closer, like it always did in Jaws when the shark was about to attack. It really was turned up loud. No wonder he hadn't answered my knocking. I stood, awkward and trespassing in my second home, before opening Tweek's door._

_I'm not sure why, but it took several steps for me to process what I saw. My first realization was, of course, that there were two people laying on the bed, one on top of the other in a dominating, but obviously romantic, way. I then thought that I had walked in on Tweek's parents, which was rather stupid, because neither one looked much like the person I'd assumed they were—the one who was blocking my view of the other was simply and obviously middle-aged, given what I could see of him—clothing, the sort of socks he wore, his thinned but not balding hair, and the general shape of him that lacked the lanky, uncomfortable shape nearly all sixteen-year-old boys had. Of course the assumption that Tweek's parents were in the throes of passion on their son's bed was quickly dashed from my mind upon realizing that this man was a stranger, and the person beneath him was…_

_Tweek. Tweek? It was Tweek. I know Tweek. This is Tweek. I could tell it was Tweek by his fucking feet hanging over the foot of the bed, let alone how the man shifted and showed the side of the boy's face, eyes closed and eyebrows lowered in an un-Tweekly desperate, aggressive way._

_I closed the door, not caring how loud it was (although it didn't even matter that I didn't think it mattered; the music was so loud they hadn't even noticed me.) I wanted out of the house. I felt like I was trapped in a small dark space with a monster. I easily applied this feeling to something Tweek complained of—claustrophobia. The stairs came so fast that halfway down my independently-moving feet couldn't choose between two steps, and I fell the rest of the way down. Numb and blind, I stood up the moment I hit the tile of the foyer and escaped._

_The moment the air stopped weighing 900 pounds the fear disappeared and was replaced with something almost worse. I should've been shocked. Or disgusted. Or panicked, or SOMETHING. But I wasn't. It was like I had been told someone had died. Something did. I wasn't sure what, but something did, and I was filled with so much sadness it all just spilled out. I bawled. I think Tweek's neighbor had been mowing his lawn next door, and shut it off to stare at me, but I maybe have made that up to mock myself later—all I know is that before I could manage to stand up and get to a safer place, I sat on Tweek's doorstep, my knees pulled up to my chest and my face pressed into the crease between my legs, nose running with snot and blood, and bawled._

--

"I've…followed you for a little bit."

His eyes were like a glaring spotlight as he looked up from his newly filled mug in angry, guilty shock.

"I'm not sorry." Lair. "Tweek. You…you can't do this. I won't let you."

"Craig…" Tweek set down his coffee mug on the carpet and stood up. "…fuck off."

Leaving me, once again, alone and naked and in shock, he walked out, slamming the door, and leaving his jacket.

A/N: ANGSTANGSTANGSTLOL if you don't get it wait for next chapter.


	2. Dave

A/N: Keep listening to Metro Station plox3 Or start.

-

"Dave? Augh!"

"_Tweek?"_

"Someone…err…knows. Or something. I—I'm…"

"_Oh shit. Shit._" Something broke far from the receiver. "_Who knows? What happened?"_

"Auugh-hugh!"

"_Tweek_—_FUCK Hold on_."

There was a long pause.

"_I'm coming over. Unlock your back door_."

--

I always spent kind of a lot of time at the hospital. It was half hypochondria, half panic-induced injury. This time it was the latter. My ankle had been twisted running from a dog in my head.

It was pretty late. "Late" didn't mean much to me. Not when you only manage to sleep in short bursts during the light hours. But as far as clocks go, the short hand must've been sometimes in the first quarter. Hospitals, of course, never really cease all activity, but it had died down considerably, to the point that, limping the halls to burn off energy, I felt as if I was walking somewhere abandoned and haunted.

I was more than a littler lost, but being that I had nowhere to go and was indoors, it didn't other me quite so much. I found a coffee machine—the kind where it drops the paper cup and then leaks coffee down into it—and occupied myself with trying to straighten out a filthy dollar against the side of the machine.

I heard footsteps echoing down the megaphone-like halls. They terrified me against all reason, but I tried not to encourage spasmodic behavior, so I pretended they didn't and focused my whole attention on rubbing the dollar. So much so that I tore it in half.

"Aww shit!" I squeaked, more from the shock of seeing it tear than the yet-to-settle realization that I no longer had money for coffee.

"Whoops." The source of the footsteps said. I jerked my head to look at him.

He was tallish, and had a figure somewhere between muscular and slim, with neither standing out especially. His hair was black, and his eyes were grey. I estimated his age somewhere around the mid-thirties, yet he retained a youthful attractiveness. His smile was friendly and interested.

"Here." He reached into his pocket, and only then did I realize he was wearing scrubs, which was odd because the moment I saw him I had observed every trait I could tell at first glance. He held a dollar bill in his hand.

I tried my best to smile as he brushed past me, slid the dollar easily into the slot, and pressed the button that directed the machine to pour my coffee.

"Isn't it kind of late to be drinking coffee?" He asked, still smiling and rocking slightly on the balls of his feet.

"Oh…ergh…not for me." I gave my best, pathetic attempt to smile in a self-deprecating sort of way.

"Why's that?"

I didn't want to explain. I had yet, in my horrendously long life, had to explain—it just became apparent to those around me after five minutes or so. "It's a long story." No it wasn't. It was a weird story. I picked up the scalding cup once it was full.

"Cripes, what happened to your leg?" His smile was gone now, but appropriately.

I bent it outward slightly to look at it, like to verify that there was, indeed, something wrong with my leg. "Oh, um, I…fell…down the stairs. Ergh."

"How bad did it break?"

"Oh. It didn't. Break. It's just sprained. A little. Not bad. Um." I lifted the coffee to my mouth, let a little trickle into my mouth, and twitched as the tip of my tongue was destroyed.

"That's good." The smile came back. "Are you…okay?"

"What!? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine…"

"You're kind of…twitching. What meds have they got you on?"

I blushed bright red. "I—I'm not…on anything…new…"

There was a slight, awkward pause.

"Hey, I'm on my shift right now, but nothing ever happens this late." He touches the beeper on his hip. "What do you say to sitting down somewhere?"

That seems weird, but he's so…hypnotically charming, in a way. Adults never really appealed to me, and I never formed connections with them outside of my parents and my therapist, some the attention was almost flattering, in a terrifying sort of way.

His name was Dave.

--

I first realized I might be "like that" when I was ten.

Craig and I were first brought into each other's foreground in third grade. It wasn't a pleasant meeting.

After spending some time in the hospital together, him hogging the remote and me pressing the nurse button every ten minutes to request another cup of coffee, we lost our antagonism toward one another, but kept the awareness. Turns out everyone who acquainted with Craig back in those days wasn't so much a friend but a gang member. Which was okay. Better to be in the middle of a sort of asshole gang than alone and open.

Because I needed so much direction, I ended up as something of the group pet. And with Craig being the leader, it meant Craig spent more time on me than any of the others. Things like walking with me to the nurse when I scraped my knee and talking me through sneaking into the teacher's lounge to steal coffee when I spilled mine at lunch. We sort of paired off—Craig and me and Token and Clyde. The four of us still hung out, but we never became the Goonies or anything.

Thomas transferred to our school in fourth grade. I saw myself in him in a lot of ways, but rather than feel a connection to him, I wanted him gone. I didn't dislike him, really, but the class only needed one twitchy, messed up kid. I didn't want to be the twitchy, messed up kid, but it was just sort of MY thing.

And Craig liked him. A lot.

For three weeks or so, I was shunted to the side. I had been glad we'd paired off, because it meant I nearly had Craig's full attention, but now, I sat silent and alone between Token and Clyde and Thomas and Craig, not welcome in either conversation. Craig wasn't interested in hanging out after school like we use to, and if we did, it was only along with my cheap mimic. I started to hate him. Hypocritically. His Tourettetic outbursts irked me so badly I couldn't be around him, even if Craig was there. Not that Craig did much help. He barely paid me any attention when Thomas was around.

The rage built. I became obsessed with my hatred of the fellow fucked up blonde. I fantasized about horrible things happening to him, about Craig having an epiphany and realizing how much he loathed him and coming back to me. I'd never felt that way before, and never since.

Three weeks to the day after Thomas's transfer, I killed his dog.

I put rat poison in a half peanut-butter sandwich and left it in his backyard before school, by the door where his dog was sure to find it. Nothing happened that day. The next day he didn't come to school, and I had Craig mostly to myself—mostly because Craig vocally questioned Thomas's absence every few minutes.

The day after that, he returned, and Craig became more obsessed with him than ever in sympathy for his dead dog. I picked up a habit of grinding my teeth.

I left an anonymous note on his front porch, admitting to killing his dog and warning him that he should leave the school or things would get worse. His mom called the police.

Craig caught the flu and was out for three days. I knew this was my next opportunity. Thomas and Craig typically walked home together, even though it was five blocks off of Craig's route.

I followed him for a while, waiting to be alone on the street together. I got my chance.

For a plan so poorly defined, it worked fairly well. Thomas was knocked out cold the moment the bat hit the back of his skull. I dropped my weapon and ran, just like you do in baseball, looking back only once to see him lying on his face, arms extended in front of him, pouring out blood as dark as it is in the movies.

They kept the whole thing pretty secret. Rumors went around like they do—that Thomas was in critical condition, that they had caught whoever did it and he was in Juvie, that he was shot—nothing really grazing the truth. He didn't come back. Craig moped for a few days, but soon, he started to forget about him. I won.

I WON.

It took me a year to be able to look at what I had done from a distance. I had killed a dog and nearly killed a human being for a boy's attention. I had uprooted his family's life, which turned out to be just he and his mom—his dad had walked out. I didn't care. And I had taken it as a triumph. How fucked is that?

That was how much I needed Craig. Or how badly I wanted him, or something. I shamefully explored these feelings—contemplating his appearance, his smell, how comforting I found his presence—an affection that was half parental and haf romantic. Which meant that I was a fag, like Butters. Not that I disliked Butters—I just knew how he was treated for even BEHAVING like a fag. What did that mean for someone like me, who was one?

I managed to repress these feelings until eighth grade, when word spread about Butters having admitted his obvious boner for Cartman. Everyone agreed—they were relieved and unsurprised Butters had outed himself at last. And, though it didn't become openly public for another few months, we all knew Cartman had requited the sentiment.

Ninth grade, Wendy got tired of denying all the teasing accusations and shocked everyone by admitting loudly that she was a lesbian and proud. Stan puked. There was word about she and Bebe making out drunkenly at some party, but it never became anything.

So being gay wasn't a disorder. I allowed myself to privately explore once again. After open-minded contemplation, I came to the conclusion that I was not asexual, as I had reminded myself vehemently—I was gay. No even bi. GAY.

I first told Craig. For all the hours I've spent in therapy, nothing's done even a percentage of what Craig's done in one walk home from school. He didn't react like I'd want him to—he was dumbfounded for a moment before giving awkward and forced support. I didn't regret telling him. Nothing changed. Things were pretty okay for a while.

--

"Would he tell anyone?"

"I—I don't know…"

"Well did he say anything about telling?"

"I…'m not sure…"

"Tweek!" He snapped, slamming his hand on the counter and rattling the dishes on the rack. "Can you try to help me here!? This is your god damn fault, and I'm not going to jail for you!"

It was quiet for a while until my sobs became audible.

"Shit. Tweeky, I'm sorry." He hugged me from behind, burying his face in my hair. "I'm just kind of freaked out here."

"…I'm sorry Dave…" I wiped at my nose with my hand.

"Don't be. You haven't done anything wrong. Let me pop that coffee in the microwave." He took my thermos from the table. I would rather drink lukewarm coffee than have to wait while it heated up, but his intentions were good, so I didn't correct him.

I stared at the table as he leaned by the microwave, the positions we'd held nearly all morning.

"Can you go talk to him?" He asked finally, breaking the silence sufficiently enough to cause me to shriek and fall out of the chair. He helped mt to my feet.

"Craig? U—um…yeah, okay. Right now?"

"Yeah. I'll drive you."

"No, that's okay, I'll walk." I rocked onto my toes to peck him on the check. "Be back."

-

A/N: R&R please!


End file.
